IT MAY SEEM OBVIOUS NOW, but as we review the events of the past year — from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2002 — it’s worth remembering that just a few years ago nobody could imagine how success would force the feminist movement into a shotgun marriage with the pro-life movement.

The nuptials were announced on September 17, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Stanley Nichols of Modesto, Calif., had an unlimited right to abortion — the abortion of his paternal responsibilities for his out-of- wedlock child. Nichols’s lawyers estimated that those responsibilities would have cost Nichols $ 1 million over the next 18 years.